What is This World Coming to? 4

Okay, we’ve spent quite a bit of time exploring melting ice and (some of) the resulting changes to The Oceans As We Know Them. And last time, we touched on the Arctic jet stream, which brings us to the atmosphere. Let’s go ahead and explore (some of) the changes we can expect there.

I just heard on the news tonight that Hurricane Willa - born in the Eastern Pacific Ocean - will tear across the middle of Mexico (despite the mountains) and then hit the south and south-eastern areas of the US. It’s not expected to be a hurricane by the time it gets to the US, but I don’t remember hearing about any Pacific hurricane/cyclone/typhoon doing that before. And anytime hurricanes get mentioned anymore, there always seems to be a cat 5 hurricane that somebody is watching. Some of them have been so strong a cat 5, there has been talk of defining what would make a cat 6.

The average global temperature has risen 1.4° Fahrenheit (0.8° C) over the past 100 years. Now, that’s not 1.4° F for every single location on the globe. Temperatures at the poles have risen faster than other places. But that is a big change over a short period of time, when you are talking about the life of a planet.

Consider the northern plains of China, home to 400,000,000 people, and the place where much of China’s food is grown. It doesn’t get a lot of rainfall, when compared to southern China, so the fields are irrigated during the growing season. Research from MIT indicates that the temperature in this area of China will cross above 95°F several times between 2070 and 2100. At that temperature and with the added humidity caused by irrigation, even young and healthy humans would reach the point where their bodies could not cool off, and death would result within a few hours. And that’s the young and healthy. Old and frail wouldn’t last that long. Do you suppose they’ll farm at night? How would the plants they try to grow fare in that kind of heat?

Shanghai, on China’s central coast, would cross that 95° F threshold about 5 times, and approach it over 100 times during that same time period.

In the Middle East, many areas, especially coastal cities, are in the same mess. In 2015, Bandar Mahshahr in Iran almost reached that ‘death threshold’ when the temperature hit 114.5° F with 50% humidity. Only 50% humidity! But when the temperature gets high enough, the human body can’t function.

What else can we expect? Some areas, like northeast US, may experience an increase in rainfall, while in the northwest US, rainfall will decrease. Washington has been experiencing range fires the last few years, but I don’t remember hearing about them before that. Maybe I wasn’t listening. But I do know that California has been in a drought for several years, and they’ve had fires rampaging across the countryside.

Not a pretty thought, looking at the future and what climate change will do to us. I have a lot of thoughts to piece together for that book I’m thinking about.

I’ll be looking for information about what food will be able to be grown where in the next 50 years. If I find anything interesting on that front - or some other front I haven’t thought of - I’ll continue this series. Otherwise, I’ll wrap this up next time.

https://www.livescience.com/37057-global-warming-effects.html

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jul/31/chinas-most-populous-area-could-be-uninhabitable-by-end-of-century